The importance of portion control

So I've just started trying the NHS 12 week plan. Today is day three and is going well so far for me, being so used to slimming world's "Eat as much as you need to" (translated in my brain to - as much as you can) it's really interesting to figure out the calories of what I would normally have.

As an example, we had homemade lasagne today. On slimming world my normal portion of this is 3 syns (out of a total of 15 allowed for the day) and this portion works out at 820 calories!!!! I could not believe it. As great as some parts of SW are, I should not have been given free license to eat that amount at one meal. So I had half of what I would normally have had with extra salad, and this was really filling so I didn't ever need to be eating as much as I used to. I know I'm responsible for stopping when full, but as a person not capable of doing this, calories really help me decide on a reasonable portion and put me off eating more than I should. Will be interesting to see what my other meals would normally equal - which might help to explain my lack of progress recently!

I'm really excited to weigh myself on Friday fingers crossed for a good week! (I've still got 550 calories left today! How exciting!)

[Hidden]

Oh yes it's easily done. Amazon sell a plate that some on the site use which is a plate divided up to aid portion control😀

[Diana]

Much as I agree with slimming world and some of their ideals, to over eat is not great,cals need to be reasonable

[Hidden in reply to Diana]

Yes definitely. As SW says you don't have to calorie-count, I had absolutely no idea how many calories I had been consuming! I already feel better having reduced my portion sizes

[Zest Healthy BMI]

Hi Kinbun,

Wishing you all the best for when you weigh-in on Friday! Hope you have an excellent week!

Lowcal

[IndigoBlue61]

Hello and welcome 😊 Portion control has been the single biggest success in my life in the last 16 months 😊 I go on holiday, have weekends away, eat out etc but judging portion size means I no longer pile on weight at these life events 😊😊😊

Well done and good luck for weigh in 😊

[Hidden]

This is an interesting point. A family member is on Slimming World, and recently used the "eat as much as you like of free foods" to have 2 Sunday roast dinners at the same meal! Not surprisingly, the weight isn't coming off very quickly!

I like the way that Slimming World gets people eating more fresh food and cooking for themselves, and in the magazine there are people who have lost huge amounts of weight and look fabulous. So it has got a lot going for it, However, I have always been wary of the free foods side of it, especially with things like pasta being a free food, just because I think many people won't eat a sensible sized portion.

I think generally speaking, if we're eating 2 dinners at a time, we are getting something wrong!